The Public Councils of the SRG SSR (Publikumsräte) are a public issue monitoring instrument, which operate more or less on a regular basis. The Public Councils are independent advisory bodies, which critically monitor the programmes of the public service broadcaster SRG SSR. These Councils shall protect the values established as the foundations of political, legal and social structures of the democratic society. The programme monitoring is done by six work groups (each group consists of six to ten members), which report to the Councils on a regular basis.
The FOEG (Forschungsbereich Öffentlichlichkeit und Gesellschaft) is a Centre for Research on the Public Sphere and Society at the University of zurich. It was founded with the aim to monitor communication events. In order to create an independent body that can monitor the media on a regular basis, the Swiss annual “Media quality” project was launched by the FOEG Schweizer Jahrbuch “Qualität der Medien”. The large-scale research was first published in August 2010, accompanied by extensive media coverage. The state of the Swiss media and communication landscape will later on be evaluated continuously, with an annually published report.
